Firelight
by Halibel Lecter
Summary: Years after the Ishbal Rebellion, Mustang remembers the first time he saw just what State Alchemy could do.


Lieutenant Riza Hawkeye knocked on the door to her CO's office. He'd been unusually quiet that day, closing his door to any and every interruption, as if he couldn't take the company of others-he'd even used the excuse that he needed to focus on that mountain of paperwork piled up on his desk, the one that swayed precariously every time the door was shut too hard, and toppled right over if he set anything on the desk. She had a feeling it was still sitting there, untouched, and that when she opened the door, he'd be lounging on the couch, sipping coffee and attempting to slack off.

Again.

It wouldn't have bothered her if all that work he needed to do wasn't essential; sometimes things she needed to have finished got held up because Roy wasn't feeling like pitching in that day. Or that week. Or, in this case, that month. Other people were starting to wonder aloud if he was sick or something, given that this was far beyond his usual laziness. She blew out a breath through her clenched teeth, less a sigh than the sound a bull makes before it charges, and opened the door.

Well, she tried to, anyway. It was locked. She jiggled the knob to make sure, but it really was locked tight, and she banged on the door irritably, just missing Mustang's head when he swung it open. Hawkeye paused mid-knock.

"...yes?"

"Do you have any work done? You've been in there all day." she'd brought him coffee, something of a peace offering in case he didn't take well to being busted in on and questioned; it made crossing her arms impossible, so she stuck it out toward him.

Mustang blinked and picked up the coffee with his free hand. The other held an identical mug; if not for his expression, she'd have laughed.

But he looked... sad. More than sad- almost depressed. Before he could answer, she changed her question.

"...sir, are you alright?"

To her surprise, Roy shook his head from side to side, backing into his office. She stepped after him and let the door shut-unlocked-behind them. He sat down on the couch, looking forlornly between the two cups in his hands, before she took the elder of the two away from him and held it, noting the hot porcelain. He must have ventured out for this a little before she got in. It was half gone already, though. Roy stared at the floor.

"What's the matter with you?"

He flinched.

"...I was just... thinking. About Miwan. And the fire." he shrugged, almost guiltily, and Riza felt a pang of guilt in her stomach. Roy didn't seem to notice her change in expression, lost in his own memories. His hair was falling into his eyes from being messed with, fingers run through it in frustration, over and over, and his head canted down all day.

"What about it?" she asked, and as soon as the words had left her mouth, she knew they were a mistake. Roy just shrugged, noncommittal, completely detached. It'd been a long time since she'd had to pay attention like this, read his body language as cues and figure out just how bad it was. Years, at least. She leaned against the wall and watched him, the way his chin touched his chest, his limp shoulders, vacant expression, as if it was all he could do to remember, let alone move his face around.

"The firelight."

Somehow that didn't surprise her. He'd been fascinated by that light.

Miwan, she remembered, was a small village; it was isolated and poor, and thus was crawling with rebel forces-or so they'd assumed. When they arrived, early in the war, it was a starving, drought-stricken group of houses with picked over fields scattered around it like the spaces between wheel spokes. Everything was brown and dead.

Farming was hard enough in most of Ishbal, but this area had received so little rain that there was literally nothing green in the entire place. The villagers survived on dried grains and rationed water from the single well, drawing from the last of whatever source was providing them, and letting each bucket of muddy bilge sit on the side of the well for a while to clear.

Quite a few of the men along with them liked to throw a rock at the bucket and knock it over, either back into the well or-better-onto the ground, spilling the precious, cleared water over the thirsty soil. Often, the person who'd set it to clear had wandered off and would come back sometime later to find their bucket, bone dry in the dirt. They eventually took to protecting their buckets by leaving them hanging on the rope and locking the crank's handle into place. The locking mechanism became the new target for expertly tossed stones.

She shook her head to clear it. He wasn't, she knew, thinking about that-rather the night before they left, the last night that there _was_ a Miwan.

They'd gotten word of a rebel group moving through the city that night, and knew that they would rest in a certain household. They were Very Bad Men and after sitting around investigating fruitless leads for a few weeks, this was exciting-finally, they could do something to help the war.

Everyone had gathered around the house at sunset, and she couldn't remember a single person who wasn't smiling. Mustang had the biggest grin... he'd looked so cocky and excited. Earlier that day, they'd drawn lots, and he'd won the right to attack first... so he calmly snapped his fingers and suddenly, the hut's straw walls were glowing. No fanfare, really, just a flick of his hand and a spark.

She'd never seen fire catch so fast. It was as if the straw were soaked in some kind of accelerant... and being straw, it quickly sent up a curtain of drifting, live sparks. The roof next to their target caught before they could even get into the building to take out the rebels. It took only a few seconds for the flames to claw through the village, and she remembered, distinctly, the rebels being taken down hastily, because they were afraid of getting burned.

They staged a retreat to the edge of town but, since they hadn't been given leave to change locations, they could go no further. Heat from Miwan-now consumed in flames-seared their skin. Smoke drifted toward them and burned their eyes, but no one moved.

Roy was... shocked. He was staring at the buildings and she remembered his expression. He was in awe, he was dumbfounded. Her charismatic, sharp-witted CO was at a loss for words, his expression thrown into sharp relief by the glaring red light from the fire, brighter than day, the color of fresh blood. They could hear the screams and shouts of people trying to get out of their buildings. When they slept that night, it was with those screams still echoing, joined by the whimpers and groans of the dying or wounded. Some of them didn't sleep. She was one.

Despite their orders holding them there for another two days, no one returned to the village. They stayed far away as possible... the burned out husk of a town was scary to look at. It'd become a blackened bunch of lines on the ground, a few half-walls sticking up here and there. And that had taken maybe three hours to happen. Most of them hadn't had much experience with warfare before; they looked at it all day, examining the results of State Alchemy at work, and she had been just as impressed as the others.

Roy mostly went back to normal after the night of the fire. He seemed normal, anyway. Every so often he'd get very quiet, but Riza didn't think of it as a problem then. She just ignored it and got on with working, staying busy, getting into the rhythm of an army at war.

It wasn't until she caught him playing a lighter against his bare fingertips-a _burning_ lighter-that she slapped the thing out of his hand and started watching him closely, distracting him when he seemed to be getting too quiet. It was all she could think of-after all, she couldn't order her own commander to straighten up. And even if she had the higher rank, that wasn't likely to help him anyway.

As the war stretched on, he stopped getting quiet. She figured he'd gotten used to it and would be fine, and she was mostly right. Years went by without another quiet spell. His sense of humor suffered no ill effects. She eventually quit watching him so closely and her job took the place of her CO's mood as something to focus on. It'd been so long that she was still piecing together his body language and syntax when he raised his head a little and looked at her.

"There were women in that village..."

"Yes sir."

"They'd come to the well every day and draw water. Not many of them had children... they came and drew a bucket of water, and set it on the ledge, so the mud would settle out." he stared off into space for a minute. "Not too many of them married, either... they'd lost the men of the village to the war..." he took a sip of coffee and sighed.

Riza waited. Sometimes he just talked about things and then he felt better. At worst, he was just going to continue to be in a crap mood all day, and her only course of action was to find something to occupy his attention until those memories went away.

Why Miwan bothered him so much, she'd never know. They saw much worse destruction during the course of the war. Each of them committed worse atrocities than torching a bunch of huts. Maybe it stood out to him-the first time he saw his own power displayed. She didn't know.

"All of them left without a home..." he continued. "No place to get out of that sun. And no possessions..."

Roy set his coffee on the floor, his face dropping into his hands. "Nothing... they had nothing left..." he shook his head slightly. "Absolutely nothing. They were broke and homeless. They were _defenseless_."

Now she was at a loss for words. Riza nodded, mutely, figuring he'd go on-and he did.

"And so cute, too. You remember... don't you? Nice looking, all of them, and completely at our mercy..."

She nodded again, although by now, Roy had lost her entirely. He seemed to be picturing the aforementioned women in his head as he gave a long, wistful sigh, chin propped on his hands, eyes focused on the middle distance.

"I could have had such a harem..." his shoulders twitched and he gave a muffled sob. "We had spare rations and uniforms... they'd have done my bidding and in nothing but an unbuttoned blouse. How could I have been so stupid?" he asked-rhetorically, she hoped-and once again ran a hand through his hair in frustration.

"...so... you've been moping around all day... because you missed your chance at a harem."

"They would have been so grateful... 'oh, yes, sir, we'll do whatever you like!'..." he said in a terrible falsetto, standing up and making simpering motions as well. "So grateful, yes... and scantily clad as well!"

Riza stepped closer to him and emptied the coffee in her hand onto his head.

"Get back to work." she growled, annoyance beginning to replace the worry that he was really getting bad again. She had to admit she was a little relieved, though. A harem! Just like Mustang. What a pervert...

"...fine." he grumbled, shaking his head to get the worst of the wetness off. "But I could have had a harem."

She nodded and set the empty cup on his desktop; papers began to scatter everywhere.

"Yes sir."


End file.
